This is not to say this is what you would have heard had you been present in the years following the initial explosion (if through some weird wormhole magic that were even possible *and* you managed to live for the entire 760,000 years). Cramer calls the early universe a “bass instrument,” because its expansion stretched out the sound wavelengths, making their frequencies lower and lower — far too low for a human to hear. In order to make the simulation audible, he had to scale up the sound frequencies by an enormous factor: 1026. As you listen, you can hear a distinct rise and fall of the CMB emissions’ intensity, peaking at 379,000 years.

The simulation is part science, part art — the conversion of data into something you can experience and explore.